


Yunhanam

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 00:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20266948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: Eseul can't sleep after filming her first night on Yunhanam and neither can Jonghyun, apparently. Set during episode 6.





	Yunhanam

**Author's Note:**

> I'm guessing Eseul is most people's least favorite noona on Yunhanam, but I actually really like her episode, because I found her friction with Shinee very entertaining haha. idk, I thought it might be fun to do a fic from her POV!

Eseul can’t sleep.

Time passes. Hours, maybe.

Still can’t sleep.

Why didn’t she bring her phone? Why did she believe the production staff when they told her they’d confiscate it if she did? Why did she agree to an overnight? Why did she agree to go on this fucking show?

Why can’t she just fucking sleep already.

Finally her bladder gives her an excuse to get up. Thank God someone left the bathroom light on, because otherwise she’d probably end up waking everyone else too, banging into things. When they asked her for episode ideas she told them that she wanted to go on an MT, not spend the night in a creepy, run-down old house. Whatever. When she gets to the date segment she can pick somewhere nicer. _If_ she gets to the date segment. When she’s washing her hands she catches her own eye in the mirror. Yikes. She did her own hair today but tomorrow she’ll definitely have to steal one of the stylist unnies who came with Shinee.

Somehow it’s worse finding her way back to her room, even with the sleep scrubbed out of her eyes. She shouldn’t have left her glasses at home, she should’ve just trusted the crew not to try and catch her looking ugly on camera. She already gave them way too many chances last night, anyway. She always forgets how she looks when she eats. Jonghyuk did a good job cooking the meat. Not all the way to amazing, because a few of Eseul’s pieces were way too dry, but good. Not Jonghyuk either. Jonghyun?

Jonghyun. When she passes by the door it’s open. Someone is sitting on the steps, and from the back, she’s like ninety nine point nine percent sure it’s him. The other point one percent is terrified some weirdo creep has broken in, but that’s just stupid. There are like twenty crew members asleep here with them.

“Are you smoking?” she says into the darkness.

He jumps and twists around to look up at her, and yeah. It’s who she thought it was. She’s stepped over the threshold and toed into her sandals by the time he manages, “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Damn. I was going to bum a cigarette, forgot I forgot mine.” She sinks down beside him, drawing her knees up to her chest. He’s pretty cute from this close up, even if he’s still looking at her like she’s a ghost. “I don’t look like I would smoke, huh.”

Jonghyun hesitates, then says, “Kind of?”

What does that mean, she looks like a bad girl or something? Whatever, he’s the one who was checking her out before. If boys in general are so desperate it’s sad, idols are probably ten times worse, considering they’re banned from doing anything about it.

“It helps me stay skinny,” she says. “I need to for my job.”

Jonghyun nods.

“I do too. Minho and Taeminnie can eat whatever they want, but not the rest of us. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been on a diet.”

“I went on my first one when I was twelve.” He looks at her like she’s crazy, but she’s totally not. She was one of the last girls in her class to try. And anyway, “This bitch at school called me fat. She was just jealous of me, but still.” He just nods again, and when she gives him a smile he looks down at his feet. “That sounded really stuck up, right?”

If he nods a third time she’s going to hit him, but this time he says, “No.”

“That sounded like a lie~”

He laughs, breathless and ragged, like he’s nervous or something. She probably would be nervous if she were him, alone with a girl like her, but she’s not, so it’s annoying. Even more so when he lies again and says, “It wasn’t.”

“I’m not stuck up, I’m confident. It’s kind of my job to be hot,” Eseul informs him. “It’s yours too, you wouldn’t get to be an idol if you were ugly. You should learn from me.”

That gets her another laugh. Which, she didn’t say anything funny. What a weird kid. When she agreed to go on this show they didn’t tell her Shinee’s ages, but she didn’t tell them hers either, so she thought that was fair, right up until she met them in person. Like, have they even graduated high school? She’s not looking to adopt, she’s looking for someone to take care of her.

Jonghyun fidgets next to her, scratching his head, shifting his weight, leaning back on his hands. “Do you like modeling?”

She likes being a model, definitely. Like, getting to tell people that she is one. If she’d taken singing lessons like her mom wanted maybe she would’ve ended up as an idol instead like all of them. As it is, she got cast in the street when she was thirteen. At least she’s ninety percent sure that guy was legit, and not some creep trying to hit on little girls.

None of that is stuff Jonghyun needs to know, though. “I like clothes.”

Jonghyun tries to hide his smile from her, looking away to ask, “What about shoes?”

Eseul’s face goes a little hot, totally without her permission. When she asked the production staff what she should do to prepare, they told her to bring her own charm, which she did just by showing up. Except her mom told her they would edit her out if she wasn’t interesting enough, told her she’d have to do more to stand out than being tall and skinny when everyone on TV is, such as looking even skinnier and taller in the cutest nine inch heels she owns. Or maybe showing off her walk or something. No one told her that only one Shinee member is above 180 cm or that they’d end up at a water park tomorrow, or that she’d look stupid bringing four pairs for two days.

Eseul leans back on her hands too, stretching her legs out. They’re way longer than his. “No offense, but I came on this show for exposure. If I don’t look my best who’d want to hire me?”

“That’s why we’re doing it, too,” Jonghyun replies. “We don’t have a lot of fans yet.”

“You don’t have girlfriends, either, do you.”

Jonghyun laughs again. “It’s that bad?”

“You’re not the worst one,” is all she’s going to say.

“I’m the only one who’s dated before. Me and Jinki hyung. Onew hyung. The one who made all those stupid jokes.”

“Him, really?” Eseul says, surprised. The longer she thinks about it the easier it gets to picture, though. He is so not her type, but most girls don’t share her standards, and there has to be one out there who would share his sense of humor. And anyway, he’s not the last one she would’ve guessed. “What about Taeminnie?”

Jonghyun laughs that awkward laugh _again._ “What about him?”

If Eseul went back to bed to stare at the ceiling some more it’d probably be more exciting than this, but it’s too much effort to get up. “I don’t know, you tell me.”

“He doesn’t really care about that kind of thing,” Jonghyun says in this weird strangled rush, more awkward than ever. “He doesn’t know anything about it either, not even his own feelings. He’ll probably end up getting hurt at this rate if he's not careful. Or if I'm not.”

What is this, some kind of overprotective oppa routine? Hyung. Whatever. Like Eseul is going to steal Taemin away or corrupt him or something. Like she’d even want to. Like she even could, when it’s just a TV show.

“I’m not asking because I want to pick him, don’t worry,” Eseul says. “He’s not my style.”

Somehow that puts the strangest expression on Jonghyun’s face, like he’s halfway between smiling and frowning at her.

“He’s too pretty?” he guesses. She would’ve said cute, but that works. Jonghyun’s smile wins out finally. “He has a smaller face than some of the girls at our company.”

Yeah, and he’s also a guy. Jonghyun might be shorter than her, but at least he weighs more, and if they held hands his would probably feel big and manly in hers. Taemin’s, not so much. If she were insecure, maybe that stuff would really bother her, but she’s not, so it doesn’t. Her thing is, “He’s way too young. If I picked him it’d look like I was babysitting him.”

Jonghyun turns from her to stare up into the sky, big and dark and endless. He probably thinks it’s really beautiful, but for her it’s nothing new. She still remembers the stars from before her family moved to Seoul, thousands and thousands of them, not satellites or airplanes or anything.

“In some ways he is like a baby, but in some ways he’s more mature than me,” Jonghyun says, before smiling to himself and adding, “Only some though, not many. Like almost none.”

If he says so.

“I’ve never dated a younger guy before. I’m not one of those girls who wants to have to do everything, you know?” Eseul peers into Jonghyun’s face, just to see his reaction when she teases him, “You look like one of those guys who would, though. You’d be their slave.”

Jonghyun looks away. For one long moment she thinks she might’ve touched a nerve somehow, but then he says, “If I really liked someone, maybe. If I were in love with them or something.”

He’s serious. Like way too serious.

“Would you be mine, if I picked you~?” Eseul says. She pushes her shoulder into his. He looks so skinny but he’s surprisingly solid. “Just for one day. Come on.”

“Hyung?” someone says from behind them. She twists around to see Taemin standing in the doorway, squinting out at the two of them. “Are you filming?”

There are no cameras? Or lights? Or crew members or anyone?

Eseul can’t help laughing at him, but Jonghyun just smiles a smile she hasn’t seen before, scrambling to his feet. He almost steps on Eseul’s hand in his rush to reach Taemin, like taking him by his shoulders and turning him around and telling him, “Go back to bed, Taemin-ah,” was so urgent.

She should be telling herself that, anyway. _Go back to bed, Eseul-ah. You’ll look like shit tomorrow if you don’t sleep._ She stands and stretches. “Do either of you know what time it is?”

At the sound of her voice Taemin freezes up, peering past Jonghyun like he’s just noticing she’s there. It takes him five whole seconds just to get out, “No.”

He’s so adorable. A pretty big part of her wants to ask if he’s shy around girls or if it’s just her, but before she can, Jonghyun says to her, “It was one when I got up, so probably two?” Then to Taemin again, “Did you have to pee or something?”

“Mm.”

“Hyung didn’t wake you up?”

“You did,” Taemin corrects him immediately, but all Jonghyun does about it is smile. Taemin hesitates, sneaking another glance at her. “I didn’t know who you were talking to.”

“What? Oh. Noona couldn’t sleep either.”

Ugh, noona. She is never not going to hate that word, is she?

“See you in the morning~,” Eseul says. Jonghyun-ah would sound wrong to her and Jonghyun-ssi would probably sound wrong to him. “Thanks for staying up with me.”

_Thanks for ditching me,_ more like.

Jonghyun nods at her and says, “Good night, noona,” before he reaches up and pinches Taemin’s cheek, forcing a smile out of him, all tight and nervous. She’s not that scary, and you’d think someone who got to be around pretty girls all the time would be cooler about it. Looking at Shinee it’s definitely not true that idols are ninety-nine percent makeup.

“Jinki hyung stole my pillow,” Taemin whines to Jonghyun as Eseul follows them inside. 

Somehow it seems even darker in here than before. All the same, Jonghyun leaves her to close the door behind her, sliding his hand down to the small of Taemin’s back and guiding him, murmuring so softly Eseul can barely hear him, “That’s what you get for sleeping next to him. You can use my arm.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”

Somehow Jonghyun’s answer to that is, “Fine, you can have mine.”

“Your pillow?” Taemin says, confused. “It’s not that. It’s just if I fall asleep I have to wake up for real.”

“And then you’ll get tomorrow over with faster. Sleep, Taeminnie. At least try.”

“You try too, then.”

Do they have this conversation every episode or something? Eseul had a boyfriend like that a while back. She’d be this close to falling asleep and then her phone would go off and it’d be him. Sleep well, Eseul-ah~. He’s lucky she dumped him instead of murdering him.

“Is it just me or is it really hot in this house?” Jonghyun goes on.

“Try lying on top of the blanket.”

“You too. You look like you were sweating. You don’t want to wake up smelling like it, there’s no shower.”

“We’re going to a water park tomorrow, who cares.”

“Noona will. Besides, that’s chlorinated, that’s completely different,” Jonghyun says a little too loudly, insisting, “Sleep on top of it with me.”

“You’re so weird, hyung. Fine.”

Noona so does not care at all, but her room is first, thank God. She fumbles to open her door as their voices drift off.

“You don’t smell bad, Taemin-ah.”

“I know~”

“Even your sweat doesn’t. I was just saying.”

“I know.”

“Do you? I’m not the kind of person who just says things most of the time. Not to you, at least.”

“I know, hyung.”

On and on and on, but the only word Eseul knows from this point on is sleep. She slides her door shut and flops down onto her bedding. Jonghyun was right. It is hot. The floor is hard, too. And she feels like she should’ve gone to the bathroom again. And she’s not tired at all. Probably because she’s back to being so fucking nervous she can’t breathe, and Jonghyun is busy finding like a million excuses to hold Taemin while there’s no one to hold her. If you asked like a hundred people to choose between a cute dongsaeng or a cute girl, she would win a hundred times, except somehow, just this once, she’s lost. It’s supposed to be her show, too. Her episode.

She’s not supposed to be the only one who cares.


End file.
